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Featured Article: The Society of the Divine Word: Ahead of its Time on Civil Rights - From its earliest days, the Society of the Divine Word (SVD)-the largest Catholic missionary order in the world-has welcomed people from other cultures to sit with them at the table of Christ as equals. This willingness to engage with people of other races, creeds and ethnic origins was never more evident than when the society opened the first seminary for African Americans. Not only was the seminary established decades before the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, but it was established in the Deep South where racial segregation ran the hottest. Read Full Story

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 The Society of the Divine Word: Ahead of its Time on Civil Rights
 Letting go in order to Receive Blessings: A Multitude of Faith
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 African American Catholics Must Answer the Call
 Who am I? A Reflection by Seminarian Joshua Johnson
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 Black Catholic Young Adults

Self Worth


Comment on Youth Articles in the forum

Self Worth by Brian GreenfieldIt is very difficult to write about self-worth because it isn't possible to calculate a price for or place a value on a person. However, our society does make an effort to do just that. In some ways we can say that the idea that a price can be put on a person keeps our economy running. Our society bombards us with its own value system to which we are pressured to adhere. We are continually shown things that we have to possess in order to be worth something. It might be a certain educational degree, a new car, or a flat muscular stomach. The pressure is added when we are constantly shown pictures of people in popular magazines, television shows, or movies who seemingly have more than we have and are thus deemed better. The truth about ourselves is greater than material ideals.

In a sense we must unlearn in order to learn the truths of ourselves. Those paramount truths cannot be found in material possessions, in movies, or in magazines at the checkout counter of convenience stores. Rather, all truth has to be found in Christ. While our modern sciences can teach us what we are made of, they cannot teach us the fullness of who we are. We find out who we are when we look at ourselves through the eyes of God, which transcends what we can reason about ourselves. When we look at humanity through the eyes of faith, we realize that in and of ourselves, humans are nothing. We are made of dust and to the dust we will return; yet with God, who breathed into that dust the Holy Spirit and who made for us the ultimate sacrifice, we are all made equally priceless.

This truth is a hard pill to swallow in a society built on merit. In the heart and eyes of God, the believer who spends every moment in Church, praying devotions, is just as priceless as the prostitute walking the streets: the millionaire living in the New York penthouse is just as priceless as the homeless man on the street.

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